Listen to the RadioTimes.com Doctor Who podcast: Meet the OTHER Doctors
Beyond the core 13, there’s a whole host of actors and characters who’ve called themselves the Doctor – but do they really count?
In this week’s RadioTimes.com Doctor Who podcast, we’re getting deep on one of the series’ core questions – what makes a Doctor THE Doctor? How can we separate one-off guest appearance from a series lead? And what about new actors playing old roles?
Spinning off from new revelations about a hidden Doctor in the BBC sci-fi series, we’re taking a look back at surprise incarnations like John Hurt’s War Doctor, Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor, The Valeyard, the Curator and more to try and work out who really counts as the Oncoming Storm.
Can the second version of Tom Baker really be included? What about characters who were part of canon but later removed, like Richard E Grant’s Ninth Doctor? And why do we count Paul McGann more than John Hurt when they have a similar amount of screentime?
All that, plus we question whether David Bradley and Richard Hurndall can really be counted as actors playing the Doctor, having taken on William Hartnell’s incarnation after his death.
By the end, we may just have a solution…even if we probably still need a bit of a diagram to work it all out.
Want more Doctor Who chat? You can check out last week’s podcast here, or our in-depth interview with series star Mandip Gill here.
Doctor Who returns to BBC One in late 2020/early 2021
Authors
Huw Fullerton is a Commissioning Editor for Radio Times magazine, covering Entertainment, Comedy and Specialist Drama.
